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Organised Sound: An International Journal of Music and Technology

Call for submissions

Volume 15, Number 1
Issue thematic title: The Sonic Image
Date of Publication: December 2009
Publishers: Cambridge University Press

Issue co-ordinator: Simon Atkinson (satkinson@dmu.ac.uk)

What is the image of sound? How can the sonic image be described and
studied? This issue aims to explore the significance of the term for
electroacoustic musics, as theoretical concept and phenomenon of
experience..
Although ideas of musical and sonic imagery appear (explicitly or
implicitly) with some frequency within some musicians descriptions and
discussions of their work, as well as within some music theoretical
discourse, there has been little systematic elaboration of its nature or
implications. In the context of long-standing more general debates regarding
the nature of mental imagery, music, and more broadly, sound, have been
significantly underrepresented.

Questions of relevance include:
* Can the sonic image act as a focus for future interdisciplinary research
that might build bridges between the cognitive and the cultural regarding
our experience of sound?
* Does the term suggest approaches that might usefully locate musical
practice with technology within broader experience, including media contexts
where sound is recorded and reproduced?
* In what ways might sonic imagery reveal more about mental and cultural
processes involved in listening and the formation of sense and meaning in
contemporary musics?
* Although musicians freely talk of the musical imagination, can this
really exist independently of other modes? If not, what might this reveal to
us regarding the fundamental nature of musical listening?
Alternatively, some might argue that it is a wrong concept, something too
dependent on thinking not concerned with the specifics of musical or aural
experience, and tied up with excessive baggage of previous philosophical and
cognitive discourse.

This issue of Organised Sound is intended as a catalyst for discussion,
founded on the premise that the practices of electroacoustic music over
recent decades may suggest important questions in this direction, as well as
that its elaboration will require fundamentally interdisciplinary
approaches. Papers are sought that deal with specific musical practices,
genres or listening situations (e.g. acousmatic), that are based upon
analyses of specific works or approaches, or that consider existing
theoretical studies through the lens of this concept/phenomenon. Within the
broad terrain of electroacoustic music studies, arguments might draw upon
the perspectives of fields such as Music Perception, Music Psychology, Music
Cognition, Neuroscience, Semiotics, Semantics, Phenomenology,
Ecologically-informed theory, Aesthetics, Media and Cultural Studies, or the
examination of the ontological status of sound recording and reproduction
within electroacoustic music practices.

As always, submissions related to the theme are encouraged; however, those
that fall outside the scope of this theme are always welcome.

Deadline for submissions is 15 June 2009. Submissions may consist of papers,
with optional supporting short compositions or excerpts, audio-visual
documentation of performances and/or other aspects related to your
submission that can be placed onto a DVD and the CUP website for Organised
Sound. Supporting audio and audio-visual material will be presented as
part of the journal's annual DVD-ROM which will appear with issue 15/3 as
well on the journal¹s website.

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SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15 June 2009

SUBMISSION FORMAT

Notes for Contributors and further details can be obtained from the inside
back cover of published issues of Organised Sound or at the following url:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayMoreInfo?jid=OSO&type=ifc (and
download the pdf)

Properly formatted email submissions and general queries should be sent to:
os@dmu.ac.uk (not to the guest editor)

Hard copy of articles and images (only when requested) and other material
(e.g., sound and audio-visual files, etc. ­ normally max. 15 sound files or
8 movie files) should be submitted to:

Prof. Leigh Landy
Organised Sound
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH, UK.

Editor: Leigh Landy
Associate Editors: Ross Kirk and Richard Orton
Regional Editors: Joel Chadabe, Kenneth Fields, Eduardo Miranda, Jøran Rudi,
Barry Truax, Ian Whalley, David Worrall
International Editorial Board: Marc Battier, Hannah Bosma, Alessandro
Cipriani, Simon Emmerson, Rajmil Fischman, David Howard, Rosemary Mountain,
Tony Myatt, Jean-Claude Risset, Francis Rumsey, Margaret Schedel, Mary
Simoni

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